Open The Dialogue

New research from Nuance Care Solutions brings to light a number of interesting statistics on how social media is playing into consumer attitudes:

• 72 percent say they research a company's customer service reputation online prior to making a purchase.


• 74 percent are actually basing their decisions on who to do business with based on what they find.


• 59 percent use social media to express their frustrations with their customer service experiences.


• Only 33 percent say they think companies take complaints voiced online seriously, though a couple brands in particular were singled out as doing a good job along these lines.

This study also identifies the gaping void that exists for companies to pay attention to what's being said about them online and interact there in order to solve problems. Problems are only problems as long as they remain unsolved, and posts with complaints are going to be updated with positive resolutions, but only if someone's listening and reacting.

Along these same lines, Leigh Householder has a good post up on monitoring Twitter as a way to identify brand reputation management issues that might be floated there before being turned into full-fledged posts detailing all the problems someone has with a company.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 01:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm sure everyone who has devised and executed a social media campaign, particularly one involving outreach to writers of blogs and other sites, has been asked to provide some sort of metric to justify such efforts. Often what's asked for are pageviews or visitors or (gulp) impressions.

But here's the story I tell all the time when people ask about my personal site's reach: I get, on MMM, about 800 hits to the site a day. But a good amount of those come in, via searches, to posts I wrote months, if not years ago. So if you're including MMM in your blog outreach plans and you're basing its inclusion on that 800 +/- daily visits, you need to know that not all those 800 people are coming in through the front door.

That means some portion of that overall number of people are not seeing whatever you've just pitched me - yet - though some of them are. Unlike overall visitor numbers we can tell who's hitting the front page. That is one advantage of the web versus traditional metrics like overall circulation - we can see how people move around on a site.

The 1,000+ people who subscribe to my RSS feed, though, definitely are. That's because via the feed they're always seeing the most recent content and updates, and they're seeing them at a time of their choosing, whatever time they've blocked off to catch up on their reading. But I don't think RSS subscriber numbers is something that's often asked for or included when measuring success. This despite the fact that, based on my experience, far more publishers make their RSS subscriber numbers visible on their sites - largely through a FeedBurner chicklet - than make their site visit stats publicly viewable.

The same rings true here on OTD, where the number of people snagging the RSS feed vastly outstrip the number of hits to the site.

Considering there's such a demand for numbers as a means to justify online public relations efforts; and considering there seem to be more publishers who use that FeedBurner number on their sites; and considering that number translates into a higher percentage of the audience that's going to see the successful results of your outreach, I think it's past time to start factoring RSS numbers into the numbers agencies provide to clients.

Now I'll be the first to state that swapping one number for another does little or nothing to address the fact that influence in a particular vertical niche or community held by one person does not always correlate to certain numbers. But aside from anecdotal impressions given by those familiar with the online space there isn't much we can do to back that up. Numbers are always more reassuring since that's how traditional media has always been measured and that's what people are looking for.

So as long as it's numbers being asked for it's incumbent on those of us navigating the online space on behalf of our clients to provide the best ones available. Considering all the factors above it seems to me RSS subscribers is probably one of the better numbers we can provide.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 02:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Accompanied by the level of detail you’d expect from two Forrester analysts, Groundswell lays out case after case of strategies, rationales and insight that show either the groundswell in action or how a yet to be tapped community can be moved to create that groundswell.

The authors begin by laying out why it’s important to know what the groundswell is capable of. After all it’s often made up of customers or employees, two groups that are infinitely more valuable to a business’ success than whomever is occupying the CMO chair this week. These groups have the tools – in the form of message boards, blogs, social networks and more – to influence others either positively or negatively based on their experiences with your brand, product or staff.

From there Bernoff and Li go into tactics to turn existing groundswells to the advantage of the company, and that’s the central tenet of the rest of the book. After explaining what the groundswell can do for or to your business they then provide strategies, advice and tactics on how to know what’s being said, contribute to the conversation in a meaningful manner and energize the people who live in the groundswell.

Each chapter takes a slightly different tack on this, which makes it easy for brand marketers or others to find the section of the most relevance to what they need to accomplish and see what others have done by way of case studies and benefit from the authors’ thinking along these specific lines.

While much of the research that goes into the thinking that drives Groundswell is only alluded to or conveyed via quotes from others at Forrester, Bernoff and Li (and the firm as a whole) also use their Social Technographics Profile as a central – and publicly available – resource. That tool allows you to see, based on Forrester research, whether a particular demographic is filled more with Creators, Critics, Collectors or any of the other distinct groups the firm has identified. This tool informs the vast majority of the book so it’s good to familiarize yourself with the labels it uses and the data behind it in order to get the most out of the book itself.

Groundswell is one of those books that should be included in every corporate communications professional’s Christmas stocking. There may be marketing people out there who still think online engagement with consumers or other groups isn’t worth it but they won’t feel that way after reading the book. Instead they’ll likely be scared into some sort of action.

And that’s why Groundswell also needs to be read by the people lower down the ladder. When someone comes to them saying the company needs to create a Facebook application “NOW!” they need to be able to keep the analytical mindset exemplified by Li and Bernoff and ask simple but hard questions like “But is that where are customers are?” Doing so – and having the data to back up their questions – will save a lot of wasted time and money.

Groundswell is recommended without qualification.

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• Forrester's Shar VanBoskirk helpfully reminds us that digital and interactive are not necessarily the same thing, with the latter promising some point of actual engagement and interactivity.
• Also from Forrester comes Josh Bernoff reminding corporate bloggers that it's actually more disingenuous to refuse to even acknowledge you have competitors than it is dangerous to ignore that reality.
• A "Facebook strategy" might not be the best thing for every company - that's just a fact - but that doesn't mean proposals along those lines should be dismissed out of hand since there's still good information to be gleamed from the users there.
• Steve Hall has some informal feedback on new media trust and other related issues based on a panel he attended.
• Between the New York Times confirming my belief that blogging is going to kill me and Time's release of its very first Top 25 Blog Index (translation: a bunch of sites that will now appear on a lot of lists built after someone issues a "let's get this on the blogs" list) I'm losing a lot of my belief that mainstream media can cover the online world effectively and respectfully.
• Get this - the smaller scale and better opportunities for niche audiences to find the content makes online the perfect venue for small scale video series that have niche audience appeal. I'm not poking at Mark Glaser on this but instead that this keeps being forgotten as series are drawn over to TV that have no chance of survival on TV.

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There's not much that hasn't already been said about the findings from Pew on how young people are getting their news not so much directly from the source but from friends - through the filters of email, social networks and other tools. But with a few days perspective and the appearance of other stories that offer additional insights into similar stories a fuller picture can be painted of the latest water-line we've reached in the evolution of news and community.

Take for instance the increased focus on creating "appealing content" by journalists in the recent PRWeek/PR Newswire Media Survey. Add to that the 73 percent that now say they turn to blogs as part of their research efforts. Even if it is just to "measure sentiment" that's a significant number of writers that new touch base with social media outlets in order to get a sense of what's being said on a topic as they're writing their own stories. And add to that the fact that more journalists are being tasked with re-purpose their stuff for online and you get a feeling that, even if the corporations they work for aren't quite sure of where they need to go, the men and women in the trenches know exactly what they need to survive as both employees and media brands.

One group of writers that won't be working harder are movie critics, an industry that continues to be decimated by cutbacks as movie conversations shift to blogs and fan sites. While there is a bit of a case to be made that the loss of professional critics will hurt smaller movies that need critical praise to survive, I don't think the serious film community is exactly going to be hurt. Plenty of niche sites exist that appeal to this crowd and the better films still make it to mainstream sites.

I wonder, though, if that situation could have been avoided if the professional critics that looked down on fan enthusiasm had instead gotten in the conversation more and engaged with online writers. If they had spent some time building relationships and gotten to know people would that have led to more links back to their reviews, leading to more links back to the sites in general and so on. I don't know if that would have been successful but it certainly would have done a lot to avoid the "critics are out of touch in their ivory towers" attitude that has become pervasive over the course of the last number of years.

You still have surveys showing print publications are more trusted than online sources, though honestly the data isn't sliced and diced enough in this MediaVest survey to show how opinions might vary by age group.

One way some major media companies are attempting to do that is by partnering with niche publishers, most often with advertising or content networks. But these aren't conversational tactics, their branding efforts. That's better than nothing but it's also limiting in some regards because there's still no opportunity for interaction with the people behind the brands.

The Internet is changing how we pull content into our days and how we interact with that content. From the way we research obscure trivia to finding and donating to political campaigns to what we get for our concert ticket money our expectations of content availability to how we think journalists will find information.

There's value in creating your own experience, though there's also some in having an experience defined by so-called experts. But people are, because communications are no longer limited by geography or even niche interest, finding the experts most relevant to them and latching on tightly. And that shift is only going to increase as new technologies develop.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 01:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From Rex Hammock, in response to a question from Josh Hallett:

If an event wants presentation slides a month in advance, send them something you did a year ago. That's where the audience is.

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We've been a little silent here for a while and for that I apologize. As we ramp back up the OTD engine grab a cup liquid caffeine and enjoy the LOTD while pondering just how hard the new Indiana Jones movie is going to rock. (CT)

• No, social networking and online applications aren't going to be big income earners. That's for much the same reason playground parks aren't big revenue sources. They're community places.
• This Search Engine Watch post says public relations people have been involved in search engine optimization efforts for five years or so now. Huh. Could have sworn this was a new concept.
• Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li have unveiled a new look to their Groundswell Blog in anticipation of the release of their book of the same name.
• Sarah at RW/W has an interesting post on how to keep up with the conversation as it becomes less centralized on blogs and more diffused to social networks, microblogging and other platforms.
• Geoff Livingston makes the case for a renewed adherence to bottom-line-impact by social media PR specifically and PR in general as well as a way to ride out the tough economic times we're in for a while.
• The fallout from some blogger relations gone horribly, horribly wrong continues to escalate, with Queen of Spain providing a good recap of the SNAFU.
• While the full usage of Starbucks' new MyStarbucksIdea community conversation site still remains to be seen, I agree with Mack that it's a great move in the right direction.
• LinkedIn now lets you create company profiles, which makes so much sense it's kind of ridiculous.
• Interesting dovetailing between Lee Odden's post asking what your social media strategy is and Jennifer Slegg's on why social media marketing is important to your business.
• Yes, reporter blogs make those reporters more human in the eyes of the audience. But they're real power, I think, is that because of the power of links and comments they also become more conversational, bringing the previously aloof journalist into the community discussion pool.
• At the same time Starbucks is launching an open community to solicit feedback on its stores from customers and others, Chrysler is launching a closed, private online initiative of just a couple thousand people to elicit the same sort of feedback. Both approaches are completely valid depending on the goals. Whatever the case, it's good to see that listening is the new black.

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The whole discussion of whether or not social media outlets can effectively be monetized isn't at all surprising to me. For as long as there has been advertising on blogs and other platforms there's been a conversation about what it's value is to the audience, to the advertiser and to the publisher. What does seem to be surprising, to me at least, is that the root cause of this conversation often goes unspoken.

There's so much hand-wringing over whether or not social media can be monetized because the online media world is the first time actual metrics were demanded to account for an ads success.

Traditional media touted its reach and sold ad inventory based on that reach. But online media had to wait to get paid for the most part until the ads it sold actually performed and then had to justify its methodology for counting visitors, clicks or whatever else it was providing to advertisers.

Even among the biggest, most savvy players, effectively making money on advertising against social media is a tricky proposition. Just look at Google's problems selling inventory on MySpace's search functionality, though that effort may be hampered by both the fact that Google caught that deal just as MySpace was beginning to lose it's luster and the fact that it's search function stinks (at least it always did for me).

Both Kami Huyse and David Armano have thoughts up on how advertising on social media channels is just as disruptive to the audience as on traditional channels and that's true. That's why, as Kami says, effective public relations efforts are more essential than ever. Part of that is through our efforts to position our clients as participants in the conversation, something that is as non-disruptive as possible and even has the potential (if they listen to our guidance and resist the urge to engage in outright marketing) to add value to that community's conversation.

That's especially likely true if they drop some of their guarded nature and engage in Jeremiah Owyang's three "impossible" conversations in an open and honest manner. After all there are a lot of lessons to be learned from the people who have the most problems with your company. If you're not listening to them and addressing their concerns then you're effectively writing off them as customers, and that's something not many companies can afford to do.

And if you or your clients are doing social media wrong or if there's some sort of inconsistency in efforts there will always be someone there to call you on it.

Yes, social media can be distracting, but that distraction is worth it when you consider that it also creates this sort of ongoing industry conference that everyone can attend because you don't have to travel and all you need is the ability to sign up at Wordpress.com. Social media turns the entire Internet into a help line, where colleagues can ping each other for advice, help noodling out an issue or just to make each other laugh, just like what often happens at conferences. We're all attendees and we're all presenters and all we can hope for is that we make the best impression possible because we respect the opinions of everyone who's listening to us.

Social media also turns the entire Internet into one big recommendation engine that can drive us to movies, music or other media that we had overlooked, discounted or never heard of. While sites like Netflix, iTunes and others all use our behavior and perceived interests as part of an algorithm, the opinions of those people we respect will always carry more weight because we're social animals, and we'll never be able to say "That was an awesome find, thanks for pointing me to it" to a computer and have it say "Glad you liked it!" back to us.

Social media can. It allows for feedback. Feedback for our recommendations, feedback for our ideas, feedback for our opinions and feedback for all our other efforts. Therein lies its power. Not to provide new advertising outlets, but to give us all a voice. The best social media marketers know that and act accordingly.

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"Just over half" of B2B marketers have left their estimated budgets for 2008 alone despite fears of a recession in the U.S. economy. About 30 percent have trimmed what they were expected to spend, with most (45 percent) of those making cuts saying print budgets were getting hit the heaviest.

Conversely, the 12 percent that were increasing their budgets said almost half the newly allocated money, 48 percent, would go to online efforts.

So B2B marketers are following roughly the same outline established by other marketers in finding more value online in 2008 than they do in print. They're likely driven there by the lower prices (something that's going to change with time) and the stronger, more direct call to action they can include in their messaging.

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Because I like to extrapolate (it's my second favorite thing to do after insinuating) from one vertical to another, this AdAge story on what women want out of the Internet certainly got my interest. It's certainly filled with some interesting information on current trends of female behavior online and how traditional behaviors might be shifting or changing, all presented via graphics that, if they were static and not interactive, would not be out of place in People Magazine or Entertainment Weekly.

Aside from that, this sort of story could be written on just about any given demographic any given week. That's how fast things are changing. That's why blogs and the industry watchers and players who pound them out are so valuable to marketers. If you're going to try to reach people where they are, then it makes sense to know where that is, no?

The audience, now more than ever, is a constantly moving target. If one tool stops meeting their needs they'll move on. And the early adopters are never going to sit still long enough for you to get a bead on them.

So while trade mags like AdAge and others serve a great role in terms of providing context and in-depth reporting, for insights on consumer trends I'll take blogs any day of the week. That's especially true since those blogs are often written by people who are trying to dissect and analyze the data for themselves, making their perspective all the more relevant to the reader that's trying to do the same thing.

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I built up quite a collection of stories I wanted to pass on. I don't have time to write longer thoughts about each one but also didn't want to dismiss too many of them with just a one-liner. So I present to you an incredibly awkward collection of stories from the last week or so.

BusinessWeek has a story about how advertising has, and continues to, become over-shadowed by conversations between brands and their customers. It's nothing you won't read on any of a dozen new media marketing blogs, but it is interesting to note that this concept has now made it from those blogs and into BusinessWeek. That's both a good thing, since it might get some people thinking, and a bad thing, since it will likely get other people thinking.

Rex Hammock and introduced my new favorite buzzword: Mediacasting. Rex is using that term as a catch-all for the concept, which is familiar to most in this field, that it's message dissemination and not page views that matter the most.

Much like beer, tech gadgets are no longer something you buy but something you rent. At least that's the premise being floated by Saul Hansell at the New York Times. He points out that gadgets have a much shorter life span before they're obsolete, either truly or simply in the eyes of the beholder. Not only that, but so many gadgets require the purchase of some additional service plan that it's hard to assign any real value to that hardware you're holding when without that accompanying service plan it's more or less useless.

Weight Watchers has tapped a popular video blogger to produce entries that will appear on the WW MySpace page chronicling her weight loss. This is sort of the extreme definition of "enlisting bloggers" as a media strategy since it tasks the creator with producing content specifically for use in a promotional campaign. That takes the creator outside their community to a great extent and, I feel, means the loss of a great deal of credibility. There are better, less disruptive ways to get this done.

The New York Times seems to be covering the expansion of democratized publishing lately, at least in the handful of cases documented by Read/Write Web. More than that, the NYT appears to be covering things like bloggers who cover war zones and Twitter as campaign tool in a fair way. It's much better than others, and there are plenty, who write about platforms and services in a dismissive manner, setting a nose-in-the-air tone that then rubs off on the reader.

I agree with Peter at Silicon Alley Insider that Wal-Mart's dropping of thousands of magazines from their shelves is a disaster. The store made the move to free up space and drop titles that weren't selling anyway, so a number of big-name prestige pubs that may not be attractive to Wal-Mart's customer base took major hits.

Not sure if I'm putting the cart before the horse here, but those low sales figures also likely have something to do with a number of those pubs fleshing out their online offerings in the last few months or years. People are reading online instead of making impulse purchases in stores.

And he's right that if Wal-Mart decides to flex these same muscles with the movie or music industry, those two sectors are in even more trouble than they are currently. They better figure out a sustainable online strategy quick before they find themselves with only a foot and a half of shelf space at the retailer.

If you feel like you're living in the Groundhog Day universe when someone says this may finally be the year podcast advertising starts to see some big dollars, I'm right there with you. Despite that comes this story about how audiences of decent size are finally making podcasts a viable advertising platform. Even though the writer of the AdAge article includes a passing reference to Long Tail content, the majority of the focus of the story - and of advertisers, I suspect - continues to be shows produces by ESPN and other major media outlets.

Sites offering online reviews of travel destinations and restaurants by actual customers are getting more competitive as they expand. The sites are also becoming more and more popular for the same reason word-of-mouth trumps advertising in swaying someone's opinion, because we assign a higher level of trust to someone we can identify with than in a glossy ad that probably isn't representative of the experience. The travel and tourism review industry is also facing the same problem movie reviewers are - obsolescence in the face of consumer reviews.

I'm hard pressed not to think of the "frog in a pan" analogy when I hear that by offering video games for free but charging small amounts for add-ons and enhancements Electronic Arts actually made more money than it did previously. The company tried that in South Korea and will soon do likewise in the U.S. with the release of Battlefield Heroes. Ads placed in the game will also contribute to the revenue stream.

In talking to my six year old, who loves to play Webkinz on the computer, the other day I realized I was probably in Junior High before I had my first computer, a Tandy my parents bought at Radio Shack. I tried to explain to him how computers have evolved over the years into the MacBook Pro I now use but he honestly was looking at me like I was nuts. I bring this up because of the PBS documentary "Growing Up Online" that aired the other night. Watching how both my boys grow up in a world that has never been without not only computers but notebook computers will be one of the more interesting facets of being a parent it seems to me.

I think this gets to the heart of the problem with online video ads: Most of them are not created specifically for the web. Instead they're usually slightly edited or not changed at all spots that first ran on TV. That's why ad shops that specialize - or at least offer - services that offer to build new creative for online deployment will have, in the long term, a distinct advantage. They at least recognize online is a new platform that has its own strengths and weaknesses and that using the same 30-second spot you created for TV is just adding to the clutter.

And if you're curious about what the broadcast networks are doing online, both in terms of programming options and advertising solutions, this research study at MediaPost couldn't be more up your alley.

Ian Schafer thinks that big business should have figured out social networks by now, a feeling he's expressing in reaction to a study showing pretty much the opposite. I think he's right in saying that senior management reporting they're as hip as their customers while junior staffers say just the opposite means someone's not being completely honest. You can also read an interview Silicon Alley Insider did with Schafer here.

Head for the hills - it seems like retailers and other marketers are finally waking up to the fact that getting linked to by bloggers can be good for business.

Michael Arrington is reacting poorly to a notion proffered at Davos that government intervention is either needed or desired should "real" journalistic outlets start failing. I couldn't agree more - this needs to be nipped in the bud whenever anyone suggests it as an alternative. Not only does it go against the notion of the free market where everyone needs to compete, the last thing this country needs is the government - be it this administration or any other - having any sort of control over news outlets.

Just as they appeared to be dead in the wake of the Sun-Times Media Group pulling the plug, three suburban newspapers were saved by another area publisher. The papers had been axed by the Sun Times as part of an overall cost-cutting plan (that included notifying employees they were laid off via phone call) and their operations will be largely folded into Wednesday Journal's other papers.

Digg has once again honked off its most passionate users, changing their algorithm without notification so that it now takes a lot more diggs to get a story on the front page. That change is also making it harder for those users to bury a story. The problem is that the power wielded by those users is now harder to fully bring to bear. When you have people who are used to being directly influential in a community and then you build barriers between them and their access to that power it can be tremendously upsetting. Worse for Digg is the idea that these people will migrate to another site that more closely resembles what they used to love.

Rex Sorgatz points to the launch of EveryBlock.com, a new site that seeks to be a one-stop-shop for what's happening in neighborhoods. At launch there's just Chicago, New York and San Francisco on the site but this could be huge. Surfing around I was really impressed with how it collects assets from elsewhere on the web into location-specific listings for just about anything.

A lot of headlines screamed that the New York Times had invested in Automattic, the company behind the popular WordPress blogging software, but the reality is that NYT Co. was just one of many investors that kicked in a collective $29.5 million. The investment made a lot of business sense since, as the story says, About.com, which is owned by the Times Co., uses WordPress, as do the blogs published off of NYTimes.com. The Times seems to have blog content aggregation in mind, bringing in posts from around the web to be displayed alongside relevant stories, which could prove to be a huge boost for the paper.

Speaking of which, Editor & Publisher has a long list of things newspapers need to do online if they'd like to, you know, survive.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 02:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Wanted to follow up my previous post on the evolution of the media landscape with another batch of stories in that same vein.

First, the Chicago Tribune has added 13 new communities to its TribLocal site, which lets people in those communities post news, photos and events. The only thing I think they can be doing better in this venture would be to let the people add communities at will, extending the reach of the site indefinitely instead of putting themselves in the position of allowing areas to be involved.

Second, John Frost at the Disney Blog says that the crew from the Orlando Sentinel live-Twittered the opening of a new attraction at Universal Studios Orlando. This might not bring down Twitter like all the live coverage of MacWorld did, but it is great to see a mainstream pub embracing insta-micro-publishing like this.

Next is a piece from Marc Glaser on how mainstream media outlets are slowly beginning to embrace their place in the conversation and allowing for more reader participation on their sites. The internal debate, he notes, is now not about whether things like comments should be allowed, but to what extent they need to be moderated. I stick to my contention that moderation is not an absolute evil as long as the policies regarding said moderation are clearly spelled out for everyone to see.

Lastly, the magazine industry has gotten some advice to start thinking of itself as a multi-platform content provider and not view the Internet simply as a way to bring in print subscriptions.

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Last week a report was released showing the extent to which reporters and traditional journalists felt their field was being impacted by bloggers, citizen journalists and other new media creators.

According to the survey that formed the report, 74 percent of journalists say new media outlets have "very" or "somewhat" effect on the speed of the reporting they do. So we can conclude from that, it seems, that journalists are feeling the eyeballs being trained on them and are speeding up their processes in order to make sure they get the story first.

But only 43 percent (and I say "only" lightly since that's a pretty good-sized chunk of respondents) say that new media has had similar levels of impact on the quality of news coverage. 56 percent say little to no impact on quality has been felt.

The story ends with the author of the study saying journalists are at the very least turning to blogs for context and new ideas or angles for their own coverage, a topic I opined on before, bemoaning the fact that while they may get ideas and information on blogs, they rarely link out to or otherwise credit the bloggers.

Whatever impact journalists might feel blogs and new media in general is having, the tea leaves are aligning in such a way that it's impossible to not see the tidal wave rolling around the bend.

(Mixed metaphor skillz: I haz dem)

Consider that political blogger James Pindell is leaving the Boston Globe for ThePoliticker, a new national network of such blogs. At the site a series of state-specific blogs will be brought together to form national coverage of the political arena.

Or that The New York Times of all papers is now openly soliciting for user-submitted photos of polling places during the primaries.

Or that magazine publishers are increasing the number of online features like social networking, games, and videos they roll out each year that not only make the sites more sticky but also allow for some creation of content by the visitor.

Or that this election cycle is featuring an incredible amount of new-media/old-media partnerships as each outlet looks to tap the other's audience.

In an interview with New York Times "Bits" blogger Saul Hansell, he makes the case that blogging is not so very different from traditional journalism, at least not in the tools themselves. It's the person wielding the tools and how they're used that make some blogs - or even individual posts on a blog - what they are. Hansell acknowledges that the journalism world has changed to some extent because of the ubiquity of online publishing tools but that the worth of the outlet is determined more by the content than it is by the platform that content is published through.

Former Newsweek CEO Rick Smith, on the other hand, isn't thrilled with how so many people with such easy access to publishing tools has devalued the news his magazine and others traffic in. Smith says that so much of the media people are now consuming is made up of opinion and not facts that the reporting is losing importance to readers - and the advertisers who want to be attached to breaking news.

I find more agreement with Hansell's comments then I do with anything else. It's always the content and the intent of the writer that trumps everything else. If someone puts out good stuff - be it audio, video or text - it will gain an audience and be taken seriously. If the content they're producing is found to provide better context, be more relevant or in some other way more deeply and meaningfully connect with the audience then it will win the battle for eyeballs.

Instead of complaining over the injustice of consumer-generated content taking readers away from the reporting an established outlet does, it would be better for those editors to look at what they might not be providing to the audience and seek to address that shortcoming. Change. Adapt. Improve.

But still let your readers and other experts participate in the conversation. Allow comments on story and look to see who's linking to you. Despite all the resources a newspaper or magazine might have (at least those resources that have survived the most recent round of budget cuts) there's still going to be someone out there with a different take on any given story. They might live in the neighborhood you're covering and know what their Alderman has just said on an issue. They might work in the industry and know that X was a direct result of W.

Traditional media no longer exists in a vacuum. They have to compete harder than ever for readers and advertisers. But there's too much "Well we're better" being proclaimed and not enough "Well we're better" being practiced. The determination of your quality - whether it be media, consumer-packaged goods or anything else - comes from the number of people who shell out their money for what it is you're producing.

(Afterward: I had this all written when I saw this pop-up - "How to get a job in journalism." Lots of good stuff in there for the aspirational.)

Posted by Chris Thilk at 02:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"Relevancy" is a word that's thrown around a lot these days. Ads online are "contextually relevant" to the content they appear next to. Brands strive to remain relevant to customers who have many (a plethora?) of choices in whatever category that brand operates in.

Relevance to the mind of the consumer is, like trust, something that needs to be earned. And like trust it needs to be earned time and time again, at every touchpoint through which the brand interacts with its audience.

All of that is especially true when we're talking about media choices. Established players need to work harder than ever to remain relevant to an audience that sees more of what they're looking for in blogs and other outlets created by people who they feel a connection to.

So what is a media company to do?

1. Start your own blog: Seems like every media outlet is going bloggy. Inc. just launched four new ones to add to their existing roster of blogs that cover a variety of business niches. The Chicago Tribune, like other papers, has a ton that roughly replicate parts of the paper. Creating journalist-produced blogs is great since it can add depth and personality to news coverage. But it's also important for these writers to join the larger community writing about their beat (whatever it is there will be one). That's the kind of practice that brings about more readership, more engagement and ultimately leads to trust and relevance. Blogs do not exist in a vacuum and so their writers need to be commenting elsewhere, linking out generously and otherwise acting like a part of a village.
   
2. Pay attention to what others are doing: Entertainment news brands like Entertainment Tonight have found themselves flanked online by TMZ and others and are only now looking for ways to catch up. I'm sorry to say but it's probably too late. The online audience is now turning to sites like TMZ and others for their celebrity gossip and not ET. Established players have a finite window of opportunity to mimic developments by upstarts before the audience decides those established brands apparently aren't interested in servicing this particular need and move their attention elsewhere. They've essentially broken the trust and it's harder to earn BACK then it is to earn in the first place.
   
3. Recognize that online is its own entity: If you're looking at your website simply as a way to gain print subscribers (or TV viewers or anything else) then the online strategy you have is probably not going to work out. There's no halfway here. If you're faking it and don't seem to be fully committed to being an online outlet the audience will be able to sense that a mile away. That sort of thinking also likely means you're not interested in playing in the larger sandbox, resulting in no one sending traffic your way, no one interacting on the site (what's the point?) and just getting little to no traction in general. The web needs to be more than simply a means to an end, it needs to be the end itself.
4. Don't mess with the trust of others: Whether you're CBS looking to utilize Digg to expand online content, a newspaper who adds Sphere links to stories or anyone else, don't mess with the success of an existing brand in order to bend it to your control. If you're really interested in harnessing the power of something the audience is using and trusting then the best approach to meshing it into your business is to do so in a hands-off manner. Don't try to game the system, don't try to utilize control over how its used and don't - and this is the most important part - honk off the existing user base. That's a good way to make sure that powerful tool you're integrating loses almost all its power, defeating the purpose of the purchase or partnership.
   
5. Go where people already are: You can hope and pray and strategize all you want, but the simple truth is that the Internet is now simply too big for one outlet to try and become the sole outlet for whatever content it might be we're talking about. That's why networks are sending their shows to Fancast, Joost, Hulu, Veoh and a multitude of other sites. The old network model simply doesn't hold water any longer and so, if you want to reach eyeballs, you need to go where those eyeballs are. Everyone has their own favorite online video site so there's little to be gained by signing "exclusive" deals or deciding your homepage MUST be where video is viewed.
   
6. Make it easy for people to take it with them: The distribution of content is not restricted to officially partnered with sites. Make it easy for people to grab video widgets, graphics or any other materials they want so they can put it on their own blogs, Facebook pages or any other site they wish. They've just increased the reach of your content and you didn't have to sit in 50 hours of meetings with lawyers to make it happen. They're site is better and your stuff reaches more eyeballs. Isn't that the very definition of a win/win?
   
7. Let people play: We live in a creative society online. People are either creating their own stuff or mashing up existing works and you know what? That's really OK. Seriously, settle down and realize that someone likes your TV show clip, movie trailer (natch) or other video enough to mess around with it a bit. Even if they're poking fun at it a little bit, that's simply because they're trying to add a bit of humanity to content they considered too self-important or stuffy to be relevant to them. They've adjusted the content and adjusted the relevance. That's a good thing - you should be thanking them for that, not filing C&Ds.
   

Posted by Chris Thilk at 07:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Add Shel Holtz to the list of bloggers writing industry opinion pieces for Brandweek. His first contribution is on using social media as a customer relations contact system and is, unsurprisingly, well worth reading.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Nielsen has launched a blog devoted to discussions of advertising in and around the Super Bowl. The Road to the Big Game blog is reported to be one of a handful launched by the measurement firm around major events, with another one coming soon that will be devoted to the Academy Awards broadcast.

The MediaPost story says the blog is supposed to be an outlet for more informal communications from the Nielsen team, allowing them to sort of think out loud and the posts to date more or less prove that out. It's also a great example of a corporate blog that really embraces multimedia, with lots of YouTube videos and pictures, as well as linking out to other resources, with lots of pointers to Wikipedia pages and such.

Makes much more sense to START a blog about advertising just before the Super Bowl than to SHUT ONE DOWN just before the game, doesn't it?

Posted by Chris Thilk at 08:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

• Keith O'Brien (who's having an identity crisis of sorts on Twitter) points out that CBS, in saying they are shutting down their Public Eye ombudsblog because of the lack of a business model, is kind of missing the point. (CT)
• Kara Swisher is going all digital, eschewing print entirely. (CT)
• Joe Jaffe is using the same "Use new marketing to prove new marketing" concept for Join the Conversation that he did for Life After the 30-Second Spot. Go check out how you can participate. (CT)
• If you got some cash for Christmas and are looking to spend it, The Weather Channel can be yours for about $5 billion. Or, if you're looking for more of a bargain, Plaxo will set you back just $100 million. (CT)

Posted by Chris Thilk at 09:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A few months ago I got an email from an editor at Brandweek asking if I would be interested in contributing an occasional op-ed to the magazine's Website. Always being interested in finding new and interesting outlets for my thoughts and seeing Brandweek as the opportunity to reach a large new audience, I jumped at the offer and have since contributed nine or so columns.

But I was not alone in getting this offer. Brandweek was, unbeknownst to me at the time, building up its roster of blogger contributors. If you hit the site, you'll see a number of items headlined "Blogger X talks about..." and such.

Here's the list of contributors to date, with more said to be coming soon:

• Me (Self-promotion skillz - I haz dem)
  
• George Parker: AdScam
• John Moore: Brand Autopsy
• Mark Stevens: Unconventional Thinking
• Paul Dunay: Buzz Marketing for Technology
• David Armano: Logic + Emotion
• Peter Kim: Being Peter Kim
• Maria Popova: STICK and MOVE

In addition to being bloggers, it should be noted that these people are also doers. They're agency practitioners, they're industry analysts. In short, these people are out there on the front lines of the social media marketing world, a perspective that greatly increases what they're contributing.

But just the fact that Brandweek has decided to open up the gates to people who are knowledgeable and passionate about topics, passion they normally express on their personal sites, is a story in and of itself. By tapping bloggers who are also industry professionals as contributors, Brandweek has in its own way embraced the power of social media. Opinions and industry insights are not the sole domain of mainstream publications. And by offering some fresh voices to Brandweek readers, the magazine has made itself more valuable to those readers and garnered some goodwill in new media circles at the same time.

1/15 Update: I fixed the link to Maria Popova's blog. Maria also pinged me with the following thoughts that she apparently tried to leave as a comment. I agree with what she has to say for the most part, there is room for improvement. But any start is a good one and I'm hopeful Brandweek - and anyone who engages in such outreach - will evolve their approach as time goes by and lessons are learned. Anyway, here are Maria's comments:

First of all, right on about Brandweek's effort to finally embrace social media and move away from old-school "suits" marketing. Secondly, there's a "but": if they're going to tap social media, they have to adhere to the implicit rules of the game. There's nothing "social" about their blogger posts, they're so user-unfriendly you have to go out of your way to see, say, what else this blogger wrote. Even the basics, like "love-links" and such, are either messed up or entirely missing.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 07:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Inspired by Joe Thornley's list of social media-themed books he keeps around I thought I'd do the same. Like Joe I find incredible value in books and the freedom books give their authors to go in-depth and provide context on subjects. As I said in my review of Now is Gone, I may not always agree with the arguments made in these books, but I don't always agree with stuff people post on their sites either. And I just love reading books. So there's that.

So here's what's in the bookshelf above my desk right now.

• The Age of Conversation (various): Where else are you going to get 100 bloggers to chime in in one place? Each piece on the current state and future of new marketing is a good read. Lots of familiar names and some new ones but a consistently good interesting book.
• Blogging for Business (Holtz/Demopoulos): While other books focus more on strategy and *why* you should start a blog for your business, BfB walks the reader through the process of actually doing it and throws in plenty of rational and strategy to remind the reader they've made the right decision.
• The Long Tail (Anderson): One of four books I've read that have just completely blown my mind in terms of changing how I think about all aspects of marketing, distribution and a list of related topics in a wired (heh) world.
• Grapevine (Balter/Butman): Dave Balter is the founder of word-of-mouth marketing firm BzzAgent and the book, while interesting in spots, often reads like too much of a sales pamphlet for his own company than a general best-practices piece.
• What Sticks (Briggs/Stuart): Not really about "new" marketing so much as about making sure you're making well-informed decisions with your marketing strategies. What I most got out of this one was the idea that there needs to be set goals for success before starting a campaign, with everyone working toward that goal, no matter what it is.
• The Tipping Point (Gladwell): The second of the two books on this list that really changed my thinking quite a bit. I know it's become cliched to cite this one, but there's a reason why it's on everyone's list of books to read.
• BuzzMarketing (Hughes): Like Grapevine, the author spends a bit too much time talking about himself and how brilliant he himself is but there are some good stories in there. Not so much a thought-provoker as it is a series of self case studies.
• Life After the 30-Second Spot (Jaffe): The third game-changing book on my list. Not only is there some indispensable advice in here, but if you read it with Jaffe's voice in your head the book is 25% more engaging and 40% funnier.
• Beyond Buzz (Kelly): A collection of very convincing case studies on word-of-mouth generating efforts as well as how to leverage that buzz. To my mind a very good resource to have on hand if a C-suite exec asks for precedent before executing that idea you just had.
• Now is Gone (Livingston): Meant as a wake-up call for executives procrastinating on creating a social media strategy, Now is Gone doesn't so much show them how to do that but kicks them in the butt and points them in the right direction to figure out what will work for them lest they be left in the dust of their competitors.
• Citizen Marketers (McConnell/Huba): Ben and Jackie make a strong case for why companies need to embrace - or at least not squash - the enthusiasm of the everyday people that love their brand or their products. That's especially important with online tools that allow people to congregate in communities and share their stories at the press of a button. >li>
• Naked Conversations (Scoble/Israel): Open up and just be authentic is the gist of the book, though it goes a little deeper than that. Certainly dated in its reference points now but still a great place to start and get your feet wet before diving into weightier tomes.
• Word of Mouth Marketing (Sernovitz): I stand by my original statement that this is the book to throw down on your C-level exec's desk if he ever asks you why you would ever want anyone to talk about your company without marketing's approval.
• Can We Do That? (Shankman): This one isn't so much about changing your strategy as shaking up your thinking. Shankman spends a lot of time encouraging people to break free of the office and live lives that inspire more creativity, something that then has a positive impact on clients or your company.

Yes, the information and stats in some of these books is a bit dated, and was so approximately five minutes after it went to press. That's inevitable. But taking the time to read them is not just about reading their content. It's a way to get a deeper perspective on the issues we're seeing fly before us every day as well as the authors themselves. It's also valuable, I think, to slow down and pull out a book every now and again and not get caught up in the current of the social media world. Reading a book is a deliberate act, one that opens your mind a bit.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 08:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

• There's a $20,000 fund that's been established to pay artists who contribute illustrations to Wikipedia, so everyone grab an Etch-a-Sketch and let's get to making some of that there Interweb money. (CT)
• Dude, you're getting a three-year, $4.5 billion dedicated advertising agency. (CT)
• If you're looking to establish a brand online, adopting a silly name that makes no sense and seems like something vaguely dirty just may be your best bet. Like "Thilk." Who was drunk when they thought that one up. (CT) (Oh.)
• Let's make note of how most of the folks announced as officers in the Association for Downloadable Media are content creators and not technology people. Just worthy pointing out. (CT)
• SixApart has sold LiveJournal to a Russian media company. (CT)
• The Common Craft crew is back with more simple instruction in the ways of Web 2.0, this time with a video on Blogging in Plain English. (CT)
• The LA Times is hoping all the buzz about Mixx being a haven for those disenchanted with Digg is true, taking a pretty sizable stake in the social news site. (CT)

Posted by Chris Thilk at 10:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

• Online news publishers are exploring ways to re-write the Robots.txt files on their sites to, in their words, more closely mirror the terms and conditions they have for sharing their content. I still don't buy the argument that Google News and other services are stealing their traffic, but that's just me. (CT)
• Along with that comes news that some site administrators may be altering their Robots.txt file to give preferential access to Google's crawler since they send the most - and best - traffic. (CT)
• Brightcove.tv, just days after saying it would no longer accept user-generated uploads, is looking toward the future and smartly focusing on building brand loyalty to the site as opposed to making a quick buck and hoping for the best. (CT)
• OMG, Google is building functionality that would let you tag particular results as more or less important and relevant to what you're looking for. This will, of course, change the course of the Internet as we know it and immediately result in the downfall of several civilizations as well. Or at least that's the impression I get from scanning various headlines. (CT)
• While these tips for enhancing brand marketing are specifically targeted at B2B companies, many of the general concepts enshrined in them are applicable to just about all levels of business. (CT)
• I never quite got what eBay was going to do with Skype to begin with. Always seemed to me like they were buying it to have one more asset to make the eBay itself more attractive to a potential buyer. Anyway, BusinessWeek says the confluence of recent events may turn 2008 into Skype's make or break year. (CT)

Posted by Chris Thilk at 07:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

When I got back into the office from a trip to The Garden State a couple weeks ago there on my desk was a package. Hmmm, I thought. I'd already gotten this month's Bloggers Gone Wild: Spring Break WOOOO!!! Edition VHS and everyone I know had already tried to assassinate me. So I was curious to see what was inside.

To my pleasant surprise I found it to be a copy of Now is Gone by Geoff Livingston with Brian Solis. The book purports to be a "primer" for executives to acclimate themselves to the new media world and figure out, if they already haven't, how to create effective marketing relationships in that world. Livingston places heavy emphasis on the idea of relationships, saying time and time again that they are what needs to be focused on and not traditional marketing. Not only because doing so allows you as a marketer to know what people are saying, but it gives the people formerly known as the audience the sense that they are participating in the success of a company or product that they feel an affinity for.

The strongest point Livingston makes in the book is that it's not enough to just take your existing marketing and put it on the web. It needs to be high-quality, appropriate for the people you're trying to reach and delivered on a platform that they are already using. The combination of those three things may not insure your marketing efforts will be successful, but it gives those efforts a better chance of not blowing up in your face.

If there's one thing that I took issue with in Now is Gone, it's Livingston's tendency to paint things as definitively right or wrong or to characterize the social media world as if it operated with a single collective conscious. At one point Livingston warns public relations practitioners that if they send out a heads-up to bloggers and that pitch does not result in the story being written up then it's a failure and they need to scrap the entire program since it's obviously not adding value to the larger community.

While I agree that PR people should approach bloggers carefully (that's why it helps to have someone who knows the community and that language) and that pitches need to be individually crafted to make the story as valuable to the blogger as possible I don't think failure to achieve pick-up is a sign of a bad program. I get pitches all the time that aren't that attractive to me, but sometimes that's just because I'm in a bad or just funky mood. Since blogging is so highly personal - even if I'm not blogging about personal matters - sometimes I just can't get excited about a story that would normally be right up my alley. Bloggers are moody, something that occasionally renders any hard and fast rules about engagement moot.

Considering that Livingston is aiming at the higher levels of the org chart with who he's trying to speak to the book does succeed more often than it doesn't at making its points. Marketing in the social media-powered world of 2007 is not like marketing as few as 10 years ago. The rules are different because the balance of power is shifting, the risks are higher and the demands even more demanding.

While there are points of view in Now is Gone I don't exactly agree with, it is worth picking up and reading. It's just like reading anything else. There are things I completely agree with and others I don't, but when it's all been tallied up it does add something to the conversation. I'd rather read something and disagree with the author than read something and have no opinion. I think that can be said of just about everything in my RSS list as well as my book shelf.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 07:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

• Like Todd Anderlik and others I got a review of copy of Now is Gone by Geoff Livingstone with Brian Solis. A review will be coming as soon as I 1) Learn to read and 2) Read the book. (CT)
• I'm intrigued by this idea, floated in an AdAge article, of trying to reach a niche audience with a tailored marketing message. Tell me more... (CT)
• Speaking of AdAge, Mack has some issues with how they have - or more accurately have not - integrated the Power 150 list into the site. Some good points from Mr. Collier. (CT)
• Crain's Chicago Business has a good series of articles on the influence of blogging that manages to be a useful primer for those getting their feet wet and still interesting to experienced folks, a tough task to pull off. (CT)

Posted by Chris Thilk at 10:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Even if I didn't know that it was the company that lured Jeremy Pepper away from the agency world I would still really like the idea behind The Point. You know all those social issues that are completely deserving of addressing but which can't get off the ground commitment wise? The Point seeks to address that problem.

It works like this: Create or join a campaign then sit back. Only when enough people commit to action on that issue - once the number of members crosses the Tipping Point - are those who committed called upon to act. Those who start the campaigns decide what that looks like, whether it's a financial pledges or number of members or some other goal line.

The reason I like this idea is that many well meaning people are constantly being asked for their time or money. But they don't want either of those scant resources to be spent on something that doesn't have the support of others and therefore has little chance of success. The Point tells people they'll only be asked to contribute to causes that have the backing of enough people to actually effect change.

Crowds, as we've seen just about everywhere in the social media era, are a powerful force. The Point wants to make sure they have a big enough crowd to make a difference. It's a good effort and I wish Pepper and the rest of the team luck.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 08:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

• Associated Press head Tom Curley told a group of conference attendees to stop complaining about the traffic portals are siphoning off and adapt. I disagree with this whole notion that portals are actually taking traffic away and think instead that news media companies didn't do enough to differentiate themselves in the minds of consumers, consumers that then found that a Google search will take them to the news they're looking for. Brand loyalty. Learn it, love it. (CT)
• I don't care how you gussy it up, I still can't get past the belief that all Microsoft got for the money it gave Facebook was the opportunity to slap a few banner ads up that people will likely ignore. (CT)
• In a sure sign of the success Apple is currently experiencing, the Mac user base is now big enough that it's starting to attract creators of viruses and other malware. Yay? (CT)
• If you're in the market for WordPress themes, there's soon going to be a market for WordPress themes. Founder Matt Mullenweg announced the marketplace that will allow theme developers to display and get paid for their works and for users to easily download and install them on their sites. (CT)
• The New York Times is adding Blogrunner's functionality into its technology section to pull in content from elsewhere on the web. This has the potential to open up some great sites to new visitors who have never been exposed to them before. (CT)
• Both Brandweek and Ben McConnell hit on the idea that there's nothing more disruptive to your advertising an experience that doesn't live up to the marketing message. (CT)

Posted by Chris Thilk at 05:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I really can't get over how much I love this graph put together by Steve Bryant on the intersection of interactivity and presentation. It's really, really interesting if you follow the media at all and are involv